Myrvold, Wayne C. (2021) Shakin' All Over: Proving Landauer's principle without neglect of fluctuations. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Landauer's principle is, roughly, the principle that logically irreversible operations cannot be performed without dissipation of energy, with a specified lower bound on that dissipation. Though widely accepted in the literature on the thermodynamics of computation, it has been the subject of considerable dispute in the philosophical literature. Proofs of the principle have been questioned on the grounds of insufficient generality and on the grounds of the assumption, used in the proofs, of the availability of reversible processes at the microscale. The relevance of the principle, should it be true, has also been questioned, as it has been argued that microscale fluctuations entail dissipation that always greatly exceeds the Landauer bound. In this article Landauer's principle is treated within statistical mechanics, and a proof of the principle is given that neither relies on neglect of fluctuations nor assumes the availability of thermodynamically reversible processes. In addition, it is argued that microscale fluctuations are no obstacle to approximating thermodynamic reversibility, in the appropriate sense, as closely as one would like.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Additional Information: | Forthcoming in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. | ||||||
| Keywords: | Landauer's principle; thermodynamics; entropy; statistical mechanics | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Computation/Information Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Depositing User: | Wayne Myrvold | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 28 May 2021 01:45 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 28 May 2021 01:45 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 19111 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Computation/Information Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Date: | May 2021 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19111 |
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Shakin' All Over: Proving Landauer's principle without neglect of fluctuations. (deposited 23 Jul 2020 02:49)
- Shakin' All Over: Proving Landauer's principle without neglect of fluctuations. (deposited 28 May 2021 01:45) [Currently Displayed]
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